First-aid knowledge regarding small area burns in children among 5814 caregivers: A questionnaire analysis

• Published in: Burns Vol. 46; no. 2; pp. 459 - 464
• Main Authors: Qing, Yu, Yongqiang, Xiao, Xiaoming, Fan, Tuo, Shen, Xiaona, Xu, Yiheng, Huang, Pengfei, Luo, Xiaoyan, Hu, Zhaofan, Xia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2020
• Subjects: Adolescent; Burn; Burns - therapy; Caregivers; Child; Child caregivers; Child, Preschool; Female; First Aid; Grandparents; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Humans; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Male; Medicine, Traditional; Parents; Burn; First aid; Child caregivers
• ISSN: 0305-4179; 1879-1409
• DOI: 10.1016/j.burns.2019.08.006

•Children need more caregivers’ being-protected from because of higher burn risk and less self-protection abilities.•Timely and scientific first aid from their caregivers benefit the outcome.•The use of caregivers’ non-scientific and inappropriate home remedies still exists widely, such as toothpaste and oil.•The scientific and appropriate burn first-aid treatments need to be further popularized. To assess caregivers’knowledge of first aid for small-area thermal burns in children, and reduce burns-induced morbidity and damage in children. The multi-stage cluster random sampling method was used to recruit school-age children from different kinds of schools. For each child, we selected only one caregiver as our study participant. First-aid knowledge regarding small area burns in children and choices of medical treatment were investigated in the manner of questionnaires. The effective response rate of questionnaire was 99.4% (5814/5850). Folk remedies and daily necessities were chosen by 17.8% (1,036/5814) and 48.9% (2841/5814), respectively. 39.8% (2,312/5814) of caregivers knew all standard burn first aid measures. Moreover, the proportion of knowing all five measures among caregivers with undergraduate education was significantly higher than the figures among those with other educational levels. Child caregivers had poor knowledge of first aid for small area burns in children. Only a few caregivers knew all five standard first aid measures for managing small area burns. Many non-scientific and inappropriate home remedies are still widely applied among Shanghai citizens. Our study results suggest relevant scientific evidence-informed measures should be more widely disseminated to the citizens.